I've played the first 6 hours or so of this, and, considering I'm not a huge fan of this kind of game, I really enjoyed it. It had some pretty major difficulty spikes early on, but then I also sucked at it and ended up turning the difficulty down :P

The story didn't seem terribly strong, but it was heating up a bit just as I got kicked off, so I'm hoping it improves.

What difficulty did you start as/end up at? I don't think I had a difficulty choice in the demo, and the demo was hard. I played it 3-4 times though and I was much better at it after a few tries. Especially that boss.

Oh I have no hope for the story. I just hope it's at least entertaining, like MGS4 is. But I'm down for Raiden getting revenge on whoever. :P

I started on Normal, flicked it down to Easy once or twice. A couple of other guys were doing the same. But I'm playing it through again now on Normal and doing ok... I think I'm just sucking less!

I've played the first 6 hours or so of this, and, considering I'm not a huge fan of this kind of game, I really enjoyed it. It had some pretty major difficulty spikes early on, but then I also sucked at it and ended up turning the difficulty down :P

The story didn't seem terribly strong, but it was heating up a bit just as I got kicked off, so I'm hoping it improves.

Yeah, the whole 'gaming causes depression' thing is nonsense spun by tabloids. Sadly such nonsense still gains a lot of traction. I agree that gaming can be remarkably therapeutic. I suffer depression too, and getting into a good game often offers the perfect distraction.

What I mean is that a lot of developers and publishers are falling over themselves to try and demonstrate LGBT equality, because it's a hot button issue, to the point where publishers are actually rated on it (EA recently getting a very high LGBT equality rating, if I'm not mistaken). I agree wholeheartedly that there's a still a long way to go here (FF14 being a good example), and I don't mean to say that mental illness is a more important issue by any means. Rather, I think it would be a good thing if there was similar attention paid to mental illness.

Sorry if I'm going over old ground here - perhaps I haven't been lurking hard enough.

Thanks for your responses. Tooker, that feature article is really great, and the Depression part of it very useful to me indeed. Thanks for that.

I think Tomara's hit the nail on the head. Beyond offering distraction and comfort, games are unlikely to be a good medium for therapy (though there is an Australian game called SPARX which is designed to help teenagers combat depression). The thing with depression and other mental illness is that a lot of people, particularly young people, might not even recognise that they have it. By seeing it featured in a game, even a small way, might just encourage them to seek help. Whether or not gaming /should/ do that is another matter.

And again, as Tomara says, some games prove that the medium can be used to explore difficult topics. Papo & Yo is a good example of this from 2012.

Recently games have been so caught up trying to demonstrate gender equality and acceptance of the LGBT community that other problems risk being sidelined.

Reign Over Me is actually a very interesting example, thanks for that.

Perhaps I should elaborate more on the idea of responsibility. I mean it in terms of videogames entering the mainstream. As an art form, books and movies are expected to deal with some serious issues, depression being just such an example. So, in order to help gain acceptance in the mainstream, should games take it upon themselves to represent mental illness in an authentic way?

Obviously, not all games, just as not all books and movies are expected to deal with serious subject matter. But given that videogames frequently use an ill-defined madness to characterise bad guys, should they also sometimes show mental illness in a more realistic light?

I'm not necessarily arguing either way here. It's really just something I'm considering.

First off, I'm very aware that I'm a terrible lurker around here these days. My avatar is now about a decade out of date. But I'm also aware that this community remains (by and large) one of the more intelligent gaming communities out there, so it's the logical place for me to turn to for this.

Basically, I'm currently working on an article that focuses on depression and other mental illnesses in gaming. The idea is to consider how mental illness is portrayed in games, and also to look at the accusations often levelled at gaming that it causes depression. I want to use this to ask the question of whether games have a responsibility to address depression and mental illness.

So I'm looking for a couple of things. Firstly, games that feature characters with depression and mental illness that isn't just ill-defined craziness. Secondly, I'm interested in your stories. Has a game, or gaming in general, ever made you feel depressed? Or do you have positive stories about gaming helping with such issues? Obviously this can be a sensitive issue, so if you'd rather drop me a PM, that would be great.

A few weeks ago I interviewed the directors of Black 2/White 2 for IGN and kind of sort of found out a few things about the idea behind creating direct sequels, and the future of the series (I wasn't allowed to directly ask about future projects, so no questions about a Pokemon MMO, sadly). Anyway, here's the article: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/09/19/pokemon-will-eat-itself

I took a break from Pokemon, and then picked up Black 1 and really enjoyed it. I only got an hour and a half with Black 2, and it does largely seem like more of the same. I did get horribly overexcited when a wild Psyduck popped up within the first half hour though :P